Rudynate

I enjoy eating in courses, but sometimes, especially in ethnic restaurants, it just doesn't happen.

They didn't drink much. My father would have a beer from time to time. When they went out to dinner, my mother would nurse a single cocktail through the entire meal. There wasn't an explicit policy about alcohol. When we were little kids, my father would let us have sips of beer, but we just thought it tasted foul.

People aren't actually that offended. This is just one of those kvetching threads where people get to unload about life's little annoyances. It would be great material for a standup comic. A Buddhist would confirm that life is, indeed, suffering. I seem to recall a thread a few months ago where you were unloading about having been served your main course and your salad all at once at lunch. Another of life's little annoyances for which there's no solution except to roll with the punches.

If you go to a performance of the San Francisco Opera, the audience will belie the notion that opera is a gay thing. Plenty of gays, yes, but I would say more straight than gay.

I usually answer "just about anything," which is more or less true.

Again, what is the context? If you are sizing each other up as potential sexual partners on social media, for example, it's a fair question. If you're passing the time of day with somebody while you're waiting for the bus, it's invasive.

In the 70s it became OK to ask anybody anything about themselves. Those days are long past. I've returned to the conversational guidelines I learned growing up -- there is a host of things that are nobody's business and it is impolite to ask/talk about them: personal finances: how much do you make....., how much did you pay....; intimate details of family life; religion; things like brushes with the law, lawsuits, etc. invasive questions about somebody's health; etc. etc.

Context is everything. In the right context, that is perfectly appropriate. On a hookup app, I would think it was appropriate.

There's a certain kind of question that people ask who want to short-circuit the organic process of getting acquainted where they want to know what your motivation is - like "Why do you like that," or "Why do you do that," - those sort of pseudo-therapy questions. I really hate them.

"Take a rain check" refers to when an outdoor event, such as a sports event, is postposed due to rain.

I worried a lot about what I was going to do when I was older because I only liked girlie drinks like bacardis and daiquiris. I shouldn't have worried. As I matured I learned to like beer, scotch and gin and shots of tequila and schnapps. I used to flinch when my younger brother would order a whisky sour before dinner. It was a habit he learned from my mother and never outgrew.

My mom helping me dress in the morning. I was maybe 3 or 4 yo. After my older brothers left for school and my father left for work she would help me dress - she chose my clothes and helped me get into them and tied my shoes for me. It was always a relaxed, quiet time.

I don't budget - I just make it a point to always have enough cash on hand for a 2-3 hour booking.

I like to knit. For years I've intended to learn Bargello - a particular kind of needlepoint - but haven't gotten around to it. I also like manicures and pedicures.

I'm happy to look older because I've aged well. I have a little pouch of lower ab fat that I don't like, but getting my bodyfat into single digits takes care of it.

It doesn't mean you're in denial. It just means that you haven't allowed an age difference to isolate you from each other. But then, you allowed "reality" to ruin your "illusion." I like to run around with men who are half my age. That doesn't mean that I think I'm just like them, or that I'm not as old as I am. It just means that I don't think an age difference is a reason not to have somebody as a friend.

When my father was older, I took care of him. I was surprised to see that he was uncut. But, in retrospect, it made sense. He was born at home in an immigrant community where everybody spoke German.

A boss I had didn't own a vehicle and didn't drive - he took cabs everywhere he went. It seemed really wasteful to me, but after I did the math, I realized his transportation expense was probably way less than it would have been if he owned a car. My husband and I started hiring a car and driver to take us to the airport because it only cost a little more than a cab, for a lot of additional luxury and convenience. Then the rates for the car and driver went way up and we went back to cabs.

Western New York, when I was a kid, was pretty rural and fairly old-fashioned. Even in the late 50s or early 60s, one encountered outhouses from time to time.

Western New York, when I was a kid, was pretty rural and fairly old-fashioned. Even in the late 50s or early 60s, one encountered outhouses from time to time.

Another thing I remember is banks with ornate interiors - some looked almost like churches. My favorite was Rochester Savings Bank -all marble, polished granite, brass, mosaic and stained glass. When I was 13 or 14, I opened a savings account there just to have a reason to go in there regularly.

I have pretty clear memories of events that happened when I was 3 yo, but not before that.

No, nobody was fat. Sure, guys got guts as they aged, but really huge people, commonplace now, were very rare. In his 50's, my father had a completely flat stomach.

Wordstar is truly from another era. Pre-DOS even. I don't think of Netscape as being that old. I worked pretty closely with several of the founders of Netscape. A web browser is still a web browser, although modern browsers have capabilities unimaginable in the early 90s.

On hot summer days, the ice man would give us chips of ice. Even though it was only ice, we all just loved it.